Chapter 7

The Marib’amal, Sailing the Gulf of Aiden

Taylor had never been much of a boat person. Although he never had trouble on planes or high-speed vehicles, something about the rocking motion of a boat underway always made him a little queasy.

He’d managed to keep his food down so far, but it hadn’t been easy. He’d found that fresh air, even the salty air of the ocean, helped a little, which is how he found himself above decks of the trawler, leaning over the side, willing his stomach to calm down for the thirtieth time since leaving Djibouti.

He had expected a trawler of some kind when they’d first mentioned they’d gotten passage on a boat that would drop them off the Somali coastline, something closer to a large fishing boat with minimal below deck room. What they got was a small cargo ship, which hadn’t even been able to pull up at the Camp Lemonnier docks. They’d had to take one of the cargo ships’ small launches and transfer their gear overboard. While the size of the ship was probably why Taylor had managed to keep from vomiting every hour, since the large ship just rocked less than a smaller ship would, it also explained why Stone had set aside so much time for them to get to the drop off point. Even once they got out of port and onto the open seas, these vessels were built for cargo capacity and not speed.

It also meant the ship wasn’t designed for passengers. They’d been given a couple of smaller storage rooms that had been emptied out to use as quarters, which essentially meant throwing a bedroll down on the hard metal floors, which didn’t lead to restful nights. It also meant just going above deck and back down required navigating the warren of thin walkways and hallways that zigzagged around, mostly to give crew access to all parts of the ship without cutting down on any storage area for non-container cargo.

In his many trips, Taylor had at least learned the route by heart now, and his mind was wandering as he made his way back to the emptied cargo area most of the team was holding in, when something pulled at his subconscious. He’d learned to listen to that part of him that noticed things when he wasn’t actively focused on something and stopped, trying to figure out what he’d seen or heard that had alerted him.

For a second he thought it might be a false alarm, and then the sound of voices floated to him from a room he’d just passed. Voices he recognized.

“ ... I don’t care what they do, as long as they stay near the entryway. I don’t want them anywhere nearby when we secure the package. You’ll need to keep them down in the entryway until we return. The four of us will head towards the basement, where you two will hold in the doorway while O’Brien and I go inside and take out the core.”

“What about the hostages?”

“We’ll get them out on the way out. That’ll be ... wait.”

One of the ship’s crew nearby had been working and must have dropped something, because there had been a loud bang. Taylor turned and began walking slowly back, hand on his stomach. It would only take a second for Stone or one of his men to stick their heads out of the door and look down the corridor, and there was no way Taylor would get to a turn-off point before they did. If he was hurrying along, they would almost certainly think he’d been eavesdropping on them and considering the little bit he’d heard, they would probably react badly to the admittedly correct assumption.

On the other hand, everyone knew about Taylor’s constant trips above decks to fight off seasickness. Most of the men, especially the ex-swabbies among them, thought it was funny. Sailors got more ridicule than most branches of service for being less than manly, so they had a habit of really running with those moments when they were able to get a leg up. Besides, Taylor hadn’t been making many friends, and there was a certain glee among the others in seeing him taken down a peg or two. Either way, at the moment it gave him a reasonable excuse for being there, so he leaned into it.

“What are you doing?” Stone called from behind them.

Taylor turned and gave a confused look, “What do you mean?”

“Why are you lurking around the halls?”

“I’m not lurking anywhere. I was up top for air and now I’m headed back to the holding area. What’s your problem?”

He could see Stone calculating, trying to decide if Taylor was lying or not.

“My problem is you need to be with your group as they prepare instead of walking up and down to the deck every twenty minutes. If you can’t handle yourself here, how are you going to handle your shit once we’re ashore?”

Of course, that was a bullshit question, since they were completely different. Taylor wasn’t going to get seasick once they were marching over the rocky hills. Of course, he couldn’t just keep complaining that Taylor shouldn’t be there, so he had to find something new to be upset about.

“I thought you wanted me to stay in the middle with the radio and do nothing? What do I have to do to prepare to do nothing?”

“Just go. I don’t want to see you down here again.”

“Sure,” Taylor said.

Part of him wanted to argue back, mostly because he didn’t like Stone and didn’t feel like giving an inch to the man’s petty little tirade, but right now he had bigger things to think about.

He’d been suspicious since the first moment he’d heard about this mission that there was more going on here than just a rescue mission, but having confirmation was different. More importantly, he now had an idea of what they were really doing, and it filled in a lot of the questions he’d had, although not all of them. Unfortunately, the information didn’t really change anything. He’d already known that there was an ulterior motive and had been concerned they might not take the rescue part of the mission seriously and the new information didn’t actually add much to that. They had something in the basement that they needed to retrieve, and it was probably the reason why they were out here in Somalia in the first place.

The other problem Taylor had was that there wasn’t anything he could do about the new information. He could possibly call Wheeler and let him know what he’d found, but they didn’t actually know anything, so there wasn’t much Wheeler could do until Taylor found out more, and none of it changed his core mission: rescuing Wayne Nash.

For now, he’d keep his eyes open, but other than that he was just going to focus on what he needed to do to get Claire’s husband home.

Washington D.C.

Albert had called back a few hours later, with the number for a man named Alan Carter. When she’d called Carter she found him to be very terse. Their conversation had lasted less than a minute, and almost all of that was taken up by Carter giving her instructions. He gave her a place to meet, which in this case was one of D.C.’s many small parks. She’d asked if there was a specific place in the park they should meet, since they’d never met in person, but he said he’d be able to find her. Although he sounded confident, she’d looked up his website and found a picture of him, just in case.

Kara probably wouldn’t have been able to describe what she thought a private detective looked like if someone had asked her before looking up the man’s picture, but whatever that mental image would have been, Mr. Carter would have been an eighty percent match, at the minimum. The man looked kind of like a sentient thumb. He was bald, his head shaved smooth, and his face was devoid of distinguishing characteristics, save for how plain it was. He had a weak chin and large forehead, accentuating the nothingness that was his appearance. He probably would have done himself some favors with a mustache or a beard, but maybe he liked how nondescript he looked. Maybe it came in handy as a private detective.

Kara took the bus and showed up early, just in case. Although there hadn’t been a pressing need for it, she’d decided to keep what she was doing to herself, with the exception of the two friends of Taylor that she’d reached out to already.

Kara had found a bench that overlooked most of the park and checked her watch continually, watching the minutes tick down until the meeting, which might have been why she jumped when a man said her name from behind her.

She turned around to find the thumb standing behind her, carrying a large bag. Admittedly, she’d been distracted, but she was still impressed by how easily he’d snuck up on her.

“Mr. Carter?” She asked, even though he looked exactly like his picture.

“Yep,” he said, sitting on the bench next to her. “Aren’t you a little young to be asking for a PI?”

“I’m older than I look.”

Once again her young looks made people doubt her, she thought, only to be promptly disproven.

“Maybe, but you’re still only seventeen, which makes you a little young to be calling around for a PI.”

“How do you know I’m seventeen?” She asked.

A side effect of her young looks, aside from being thought of as way too young, was that no one ever seemed to know how old she actually was.

“I looked up your ID with the DMV. How else would I have known what you looked like to find you?”

She hadn’t considered that he’d done that, even though she’d done almost the same thing.

“Yeah, of course. And yes, I’m young to need a private detective, but Mr. Franklin said he knew someone who could help me with a problem when I called him.”

“So what’s your problem? Boy trouble?”

She held her tongue, which was a feat for her, although she couldn’t keep the snark out of her voice.

“No. It’s not boy trouble.”

She explained, in detail, what Taylor was doing, who Packer was, and the background of the animosity between the fat little political operative and her father, and what she knew about his involvement with the mission Taylor was on.

“That is ... a lot. So you’re concerned that he might try and take out some of his anger on your father, while he’s in a dangerous situation, or have one of the men you think work for him do it?”

“I don’t know. He’s an evil little man, but he’s smart. If he wanted to just get vengeance, I’m sure he would have done something about it in the months since the election. Sure, I have no doubt he’d try something if it didn’t cost him anything, but he’s all about doing whatever gets him that next step. My father kept saying the whole thing being in Somalia didn’t make sense, that he thought they were up to something, and that Packer being involved convinced him of that even more. I think if he is up to something, and if he was the person trying to keep my father from going, Packer might see him as some kind of threat to whatever scheme he has going on. Which means he will have a reason to do something.”

“Okay. And how do you think I can help?”

“I just want to know what he’s up to. If it’s nothing, then that’s it. If it’s something, then I want to know about it.”

“I see. Well, there are a couple of ways of going about that, but unfortunately, I already have several cases, and this kind of thing mostly requires just watching the target until they do something and being there to see what it is. That, I don’t have time for.”

“Then why even agree to a meeting?” Kara said, her English slipping in her annoyance.

“Because when I told Albert that, he asked if I had some other way of helping you. I told him other than telling you how to do it yourself and giving you the tools, I couldn’t do anything for you. I’d been joking, but he took me seriously, and asked that I do just that.”

“I need to follow him?”

“Look kid, what I think you should do is go home. Your dad sounds like a smart guy and he clearly already has reservations about this other fella. I’m sure he’s watching them and is ready for any sign of dirty dealing. This isn’t a game and if he is into something and sees you, you’ll be the one needing help.”